Driver arrested in Spain's fatal train crash

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain — Spanish police said today they have arrested the driver of the train that sped through a curve and toppled over, killing 78 people, and plan to question him over suspected reckless driving.

As blame increasingly fell on the still-hospitalized driver over Spain's deadliest railway crash in decades, authorities located the train's so-called "black box" that is expected to shed further light on the disaster's cause.

Carriages of the crashed train which killed 78 people are carried away on trucks today in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.David Ramos/Getty Images

Investigators said they would seek evidence of failings by Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, the 52-year-old driver, as well as the train's internal speed-regulation systems in the Wednesday derailment.

The chief of the train operator, Renfe, defended the driver today, lauding what it called his exhaustive experience. But the country's railway agency, Adif, noted that the driver should have started slowing the train long before reaching the disastrous turn.

In an interview with the Associated Press, an American passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was traveling 121 mph seconds before the crash — far above the 50 mph speed limit on the curve where it derailed. The passenger, 18-year-old Stephen Ward, said the train appeared to have accelerated, not decelerated.

And Gonzalo Ferre, president of the rail infrastructure company Adif, said the driver should have started slowing the train 2.5 miles before reaching a dangerous bend that train drivers had been told to respect.

"Four kilometers before the accident happened he already had warnings that he had to begin slowing his speed, because as soon as he exits the tunnel he needs to be traveling at 80 kilometers per hour," Ferre said.

At the scene, hundreds of onlookers watched as crews used a crane today to hoist smashed and burned-up cars onto flat-bed trucks to cart them away. The shattered front engine had been tipped back upright but remained resting beside the tracks, just yards from the passage of resumed train traffic.

Grieving families gathered for funerals near the site of the crash in Santiago de Compostela, a site of Catholic pilgrimage that had been preparing to celebrate its most revered saint, James, but those annual festivities were canceled Thursday.

Police lowered the death toll today to 78 as forensic scientists matched body parts. They previously had identified 80 dead.

Amo was officially arrested Thursday night in the hospital. Photographs indicated he suffered a head wound in the crash.

Jaime Iglesias, police chief of Spain's northwest Galicia region, said Amo would be questioned "as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident." When asked, Iglesias described Amo's alleged offense as "recklessness." He declined to elaborate.